Speeches by Yang.

“No thank you. There is much we can now do to mitigate the costs of Brexit for our constituents, including securing a sanitary and phytosanitary veterinary agreement with the EU. I ask the Minister to give an update on the progress of that. Colleagues on the living standards coalition of MPs found that securing such an …”

“To go back to your original point on what you are trying to maximise, you stated that you want to maximise business investment, subject to not eroding the current level of consumer protection or competitiveness. Does that suggest that you think that where the UK is right now in terms of our level of consumer protection…”

“On a broader philosophical or economic principles level, do you think there is too much competition and market regulation that stifles growth in the UK right now?”

“On the topic of balancing regulation and growth, you have described how a big barrier to business investment in the UK is lack of predictability of the regulatory environment. As my colleagues have mentioned, given the drop in the last year not just in overall decisions on mergers, but in the number of investigations p…”

“You mentioned the 15 years of low private investment in the UK, which has really damaged our economy. Did the CMA have any part to play in that?”

“Mr Gurr, using that analogy you made with the constrained optimisation problem, is the CMA already at the optimal frontier and, if not, where could it be improved?”

“So are you considering now how the way people are shopping needs to change the taxation system?”

“So the only difference is that it will not be giving us the confidence intervals for that?”

“Secondly, over the course of both of our lifetimes, business rates as a proportion of GDP have really fallen. People are shopping in different ways: people are shopping online and our high streets are seeing a transformation as well. Is the system of business rates sustainable? You mentioned the £34 billion that HMRC w…”

“But the formula—the process itself—is within your remit. You could change it if you wanted to.”

“Is the valuation process itself going to stay as complicated as it is right now?”

“Minister, you have set out several times in your responses to us how the system of business rates taxation is complicated, and you have done a lot of education and online videos explaining the complications. The valuation process falls under HMRC now, with the Valuation Office Agency coming in-house, so all the complic…”

“To clarify, will the OBR produce an assessment of headroom at the end of the forecast period?”

“So you take all those different factors in the round, but if the MPC were to vote one year to slow down QT dramatically, for example, I presume your advice to Ministers about the capacity of the gilt markets would change. Is that the kind of decision making and advice that you give?”

“Secondly, you mentioned to Dame Harriett that the job advert will be going up in the near future for the chair of the OBR, which has been unfilled for two and a half months. Why has it not gone up already?”

“Could you talk me through how the Treasury decided how much funding to provide HMRC for closing the tax gap?”

“Given that the Treasury has targets for how much you want to raise from closing the tax gap at different fiscal events, how confident are you that the amount of investment you have put in gives the level of staffing—the number of compliance officers and so on—needed to actually meet those targets? Have you made an asse…”

“I fully share your frustration about that fact, but given that even the confidence intervals will be taken away, surely there will be more focus on that single-point estimate, not less.”

“Coming out of the experience of the OBR leak inquiry that Dame Harriett mentioned, will the Treasury change the nature of its engagement with the OBR going forward, for example the number of different rounds of information passing to and fro, the number of forecast rounds and so on?”

“But if you compare the experience of a member of the public, or even a member of the financial media, from the last spring statement to this coming spring statement, will virtually nothing have changed?”